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Lictors in the Roman World Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 4-18-2019 2:00 PM Lictors in the Roman World Erin Pierik The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Nousek, Debra L The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Classics A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Master of Arts © Erin Pierik 2019 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the Ancient History, Greek and Roman through Late Antiquity Commons Recommended Citation Pierik, Erin, "Lictors in the Roman World" (2019). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 6128. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/6128 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Abstract Lictors attended the senior magistrates of Rome for nearly its entire history. As an important part of the apparatus of state, lictors have received little scholarly attention in their own right. This thesis explores the roles lictors played within the constitution of Rome and how they supported and reinforced the authority of the magistrates. Lictors were highly symbolic as representatives of state authority and were used in the literary sources to demonstrate certain aspects of the state. Finally, material evidence for lictors is analyzed to provide a picture of lictors as people and as a social class that is not described in the literary sources. This thesis concludes that lictors formed an essential component of magisterial authority, were potent symbols of state, and formed an important part of the civil service for the sub-elite classes. Keywords Lictor, Magistrate, Rome, Apparitor, Fasces, Roman Civil Service, Procession, Administration, Roman Law, Roman Constitution. i Acknowledgments First and foremost I would like to thank my supervisor and mentor, Dr. Debra Nousek. Throughout my time at the University of Western Ontario, Dr. Nousek has been a support and inspiration for me. Dr. Nousek’s comments and advice were especially insightful and made me think more deeply about my writing and analysis, making me a better scholar. Writing this thesis under Dr. Nousek’s supervision has been a great pleasure and a wonderful learning experience. I would also like to thank my committee members and readers, Dr. Margaret McGlynn, Dr. Alexander Meyer, and Dr. Kelly Olson for their time and valuable feedback. Last but not least, I would like to thank my colleagues, especially Valeria, Doug, Shereen, and Charlie, whose conversations, friendship, and late night study sessions have been a highlight of this degree. This would have been a long and lonely journey without them. ii Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgments............................................................................................................... ii Table of Contents...............................................................................................................iii Introduction......................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1............................................................................................................................. 3 1 Lictors and the Roman Constitution .............................................................................. 3 1.1 Lictors and the Senior Magistrates of Rome........................................................... 3 1.2 Lictors of the Principate........................................................................................ 13 1.3 Lictors and the Magistrates’ Use of Force............................................................ 17 1.4 The Appearance of Lictors.................................................................................... 27 1.5 Lictors in Procession............................................................................................. 35 1.6 Lictors Beyond Rome’s College of Senior Magistrates ....................................... 50 Chapter 2........................................................................................................................... 56 2 The Use of Lictors in the Literary Sources .................................................................. 56 2.1 The Etruscan and Regal Origins of Lictors........................................................... 56 2.2 Lictors in the Early Republic ................................................................................ 60 2.3 Cicero’s Invective in the Late Republic................................................................ 66 Chapter 3........................................................................................................................... 84 3 Material Evidence for Lictors ...................................................................................... 84 3.1 Demographics ....................................................................................................... 84 3.2 Collegia................................................................................................................. 85 3.3 Rank and Prestige ................................................................................................. 88 3.4 Apparitorial Ordo.................................................................................................. 89 iii 3.5 Size of the Decuriae.............................................................................................. 91 3.6 Remuneration........................................................................................................ 92 3.7 Allocation.............................................................................................................. 93 3.8 Late Imperial Decline ........................................................................................... 96 4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 98 5 Bibliography............................................................................................................... 100 Curriculum Vitae ............................................................................................................ 104 iv 1 Introduction Lictors were very likely one of those aspects of daily Roman life that hardly merited mention by the ancient sources. Within the pageantry, processions, and daily functioning of the state, lictors were omnipresent. They attended magistrates at war and at home, they presided over legal proceedings and were part of maintaining the Roman presence abroad. Yet most ancient authors did not see fit to take the time to describe lictors in any detail. Similarly modern scholarship has paid little attention to the role of lictors in Roman society. Two scholars have explored lictors in some detail. Nippel’s article, “Policing Rome” (1984), and his later book on the same topic, Public Order (1995), explore the structures and institutions used to maintain order in Rome and naturally discuss the role of lictors. As lictors by themselves had no independent authority to enforce laws or maintain public order as a modern police force does, but rather served to support and reinforce the authority of the magistrates, lictors are not a major feature of either work. Purcell’s “The Apparitors: A Study in Social Mobility” (1983) treats lictors within the broader context of the social mobility of the apparitorial class, which was composed of the scribes, criers, messengers and lictors that attended the chief magistrates of Rome. He devotes the most space to the scribae, for whom the sources are better and the cases of social advancement more striking. Lictors, whose role is described as ‘menial’, play a lesser role within the study and are certainly not treated within their own right.1 This thesis developed from a desire to understand what the occupation of lictor entailed and how Romans might have regarded their role in society. I begin with an attempt to categorize the various jobs for lictors that appeared in the literary sources. The roles available to lictors were closely tied to those available to the Roman magistrates that they attended. As the Roman constitution and its magistrates evolved, so too did the lictors who attended them. Chapter One examines the broad framework of the Roman constitution and the magistrates who were accompanied by lictors in order to understand 1 Purcell 1983, 149. 2 what role lictors, as a part of the apparatus of state, played in Roman society. Lictors are most often mentioned in reference to the Republic and the impression left to us of lictors is considerably influenced by this bias of the sources. Chapter Two examines the literary uses of lictors in the two significant sources of information about lictors, Cicero and Livy. Both authors provide many examples of lictors carrying out their duties and serve as a valuable resource for the analysis of Chapter One. Cicero and Livy, however, also use the cultural symbolism of lictors within their narratives. Chapter Two examines this symbolism and its use in building literary narratives. The surviving literary sources were largely written by and for an elite Roman audience and very
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